Archive for July, 2009

Late yesterday, Prof. “I’m a black man in America” Gates, Officer Crowley, and President Barack “I’m ready to drink myself into oblivion” Obama, along with the idiot who’s the current VP (who needs no introduction) all sat down for a nice…quiet…photo op…err…round of beers. It seems Obama had a change of heart and decided that Officer Crowley wasn’t as “stupid” as he first thought (since his comments suggesting such a thing have contributed to his continually diving poll numbers).

The government is suspending the explosively popular â€˜cash for clunkers’ program at midnight tonight fearing it would go broke before it could parcel out what it still owes dealers for a huge backlog of sales.

The pending suspension was confirmed by Bailey Wood, legislative director for the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), which had been called Thursday night by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which administers the program. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., confirmed as well, saying she had been told by congressional leaders.

“Obviously the program has been an immense success in stimulating automotive sales,” Wood said.

“The thing has exploded. It has exceeded everyone’s expectations,” said Miller, who was involved in writing the original legislation, known as CARS, for Car Allowance Rebate System. “Throughout our history, it has been auto sales that have pulled us out of recession. People are more likely to buy cars than houses. Not to be too Pollyannaish, but we’re gettin’ our mojo back. This could be the pivot” that begins an economic recovery.

As of late Thursday, the government had committed roughly $850 million of the program’s $1 billion, according to calculations by NADA and various congressional offices. It’s unclear whether and how the CARS program could be restarted.

I love how Miller comes up with the line “Throughout our history, it has been auto sales that have pulled us out of recession.” Gee, I thought it was business expansion, followed by an uptick in employment followed by consumer spending that would, you know, just possibly allow one to go out and buy a new car? However, that is rather hard to do when the economy is shedding 500,000-700,000 jobs every month and the investment and credit markets are essentially in a holding pattern, fearful of the next Great Leap Forward Plan will come out of this White House and Bellvue Congress.

Obama called the gem an “unbelievable achievement” and joked that maybe it happened because he wore his White Sox jacket while throwing out the first pitch at last week’s All-Star Game.

I hardly think that Obama’s girly-man throw was an inspiration for Buehrle’s stellar performance. But I suppose it does give hope to even the fattest couch potato that even they can throw a better pitch than the POTUS.

Also telling was a sentence later on in the article:

“Even when you’re pitching a perfect game, you still need help,” the president said. “That kind of team play is important. … That’s not how Washington has been doing things.”

Funny, I suppose that trying to set arbitrary deadlines and ramming through landscape-altering legislation without any debate is his idea of “teamwork”?

ObamaCare is starting to resemble the Titanic, minus the lifeboats and Leo DiCaprio.

Angered by what they consider lying and double-dealing, the Blue Dog Democrats have seemingly started a mutiny of their own that threatens to scuttle the entire House health care package. Or at the very least, bottle it up in committee and keep it from a full vote before the August recess, in spite of what Pelosi has been saying about getting a full House vote on it next week.

The seven Blue Dogs on the Energy and Commerce Committee stormed out of a Friday meeting with their committee chairman, Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), saying Waxman had been negotiating in bad faith over a number of provisions Blue Dogs demanded be changed in the stalled healthcare bill.

“I’ve been lied to,” Blue Dog Coalition Co-Chairman Charlie Melancon (D-La.) said on Friday. “We have not had legitimate negotiations.

“Mr. Waxman has decided to sever discussions with the Blue Dogs who are trying to make this bill work for America,” Melancon said.

Although those Blue Dogs were supposed to be headed back into another meeting of the Energy and Commerce Democrats, their anger was visible.

If the two sides cannot reach an agreement, the only hope for passage of the bill in the House will be to go straight to the floor, an option leaders shied away from endorsing but said was an option.

On one hand, there is victory not to have the vote before the recess. On the other hand, a vote that defeats the bill would be an even better setback. Should we call their bluff, or is Pelosi’s confidence for real?

Maybe these Blue Dogs are starting to live up to their name. At the very least they are getting a good taste of how megalomaniacs like Pelosi and Waxman rule their private little fiefdoms.

As the wheels of the ObamaCare wagon keep splintering and coming off, another gauntlet has been laid down. And this one may spark other states to start using their own Constitutionally given rights to keep the yoke of Washington from invading their state budgets and economies.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has indicated that he is willing to use states’ rights protections as a weapon to counter the possibility of a federally run health care system.

AUSTIN â€” Gov. Rick Perry, raising the specter of a showdown with the Obama administration, suggested Thursday that he would consider invoking states’ rights protections under the 10th Amendment to resist the president’s healthcare plan, which he said would be “disastrous” for Texas.

Interviewed by conservative talk show host Mark Davis of Dallas’ WBAP/820 AM, Perry said his first hope is that Congress will defeat the plan, which both Perry and Davis described as “Obama Care.” But should it pass, Perry predicted that Texas and a “number” of states might resist the federal health mandate.

“I think you’ll hear states and governors standing up and saying ‘no’ to this type of encroachment on the states with their healthcare,” Perry said. “So my hope is that we never have to have that stand-up. But I’m certainly willing and ready for the fight if this administration continues to try to force their very expansive government philosophy down our collective throats.”

More and more governors are starting to realize the impossible demands, mandates and costs that being willing appendages of the federal government cost them and their communities. And that maybe the key to finally reversing Washington’s power over sovereign states.

DETROIT (Reuters) – General Motors posted Wednesday a 22 percent global sales drop from a year earlier for the first six months of 2009 amid the economic slowdown and the automaker’s slide into bankruptcy.

GM said its global first-half sales, which include brands the automaker is trimming from its lineup, fell 21.8 percent to 3.55 million vehicles. The automaker’s sales in the second quarter fell 15.4 percent to 1.94 million vehicles.

The automaker said second-quarter sales reflected continuing economic pressures and production cuts in the United States. It estimated a 12 percent second-quarter global market share, down 0.3 percentage point from a year earlier.

Gee, he did such a wonderful job with Caterpillar, who would have guessed?

Washington, D.C. , Jul 21 – Looks like the Obama Administration is also going to great lengths to oppose H.R. 2743, the “Automobile Dealer Economic Rights Restoration Act of 2009.”

I’ve talked extensively about how on July 6th GM dealers received a letter from the General Motors National Dealer Council urging them to sign a sort of petition to Congress immediately; no later than 5:00 p.m. the very next day, saying that they opposed passage of the bill.

I am a co-sponsor of H.R. 2743 along with 241 other Members of Congress. If passed, it would essentially reinstate the economic and contract rights of dealers who were arbitrarily dropped by Chrysler and General Motors during their respective restructurings. In essence, H.R. 2473 makes these dealers whole instead of allowing their livelihoods to be taken from them with no legal recourse and no financial compensation.

According to TradingMarkets.com, the Obama Administration is urging opposition to this bill, too. The White House has said that reversing the closings would set a “dangerous precedent, potentially raising legal concerns, to intervene into a closed judicial bankruptcy proceeding on behalf of one particular group at this point.”

Translation: We cannot allow GOP donors to own dealerships and therefore have their profits end up in GOP campaign coffers.

The ObamaCare patient that is. As more and more details of the ghoulish plan comes to light, more and more people are becoming downright disgusted and outraged at the endless provisions, costs, taxes and intrusions such a system would impose on the populace.

From mandatory end-of-life senior counseling (Kevorkian could be Czar of that!) to wiping out between 80-120 million private insurance plans to the government exempting themselves from lawsuits to blanket coverage for all illegal aliens, among a maze of other horrors, people are standing up and being counted. And public officials supportive of the bill are feeling the heat.

Let us start with Rep. Russ Carnahan, speaking to a small group in MO the other day: (Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin)

Night of Grinning Dead:

The laughter could hardly be unexpected, as using the words “efficiency” and “savings” when talking about any government program is more of a Joke Machine then Maury Amsterdam in his prime. However, the AARP Grinning Ghouls sitting at the dais seem to be taking little notice of it. Maybe they just got their estrogen shots an hour earlier.

As for the Big Lie that Obama keeps peddling about “keeping your own doctor”, the lie has been put to that by many sources.

A new analysis from The Heritage Foundation — conducted by The Lewin Group — shows the public plan component within the House Democrats’ health reform bill is in conflict with how the Congress and President Obama are selling their reform plan. According to the Lewin study:

- Approximately 103 million people would be covered under the new public plan and as a consequence about 83.4 million people would lose their private insurance. This would represent a 48.4 percent reduction in the number of people with private coverage.

- About 88.1 million workers would see their current private, employer-sponsored health plan go away and would be shifted to the public plan.

- Yearly premiums for the typical American with private coverage could go up by as much as $460 per privately insured person, as a result of increased cost-shifting stemming from a public plan modeled on Medicare.

Add to that, the fact there is surtax on those companies whose payrolls are more than $150,000 and above and the fact that individuals filing IRS tax forms would need to prove that they are in compliance with being registered with a government program or face fines and automatic enrollment in a random program and you can see why the bill is losing steam, but fast.

The House version of the Health Care Bill is going to require (p 425-430) mandatory counseling for all seniors at a minimum of every five years, more often if the senior is sick or in a nursing home.

Just how many government trained counselors will that put into the work force? With an over 65 population of 38,000,000 US (Census, 2007), 4 counseling sessions daily, over 37,000, at a minimum, that’s how many. Plus their supervisors, plus the report readers, plus the oversight agency.

Now, will every one of these “counselors” come equipped with a cyanide pill (for the cooperative) and a pillow (for the uncooperative)?

Gird your loins? More like wear a SARS mask and live in a plastic wrap tent.